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Dwindling Support

Tony Parker of the Spurs, center, drove against Harrison Barnes, left, and Stephen Curry of the Warriors on Tuesday in San Antonio.Credit
Mike Stone/Reuters

A team falls behind, three games to one, in a seven-game series, and the verdicts are quickly delivered.

Latest vivid exhibit: the Knicks. Mike Vaccaro writes in The New York Post that after losing to the Indiana Pacers on Tuesday, they “looked like someone other than Will Hunting trying to figure out the math problem on the wall.” The Pacers, he says, are the smarter team, and also: “They’re the more poised team. They’re the more relaxed team. They’re the hungrier team.”

J. R. Smith is one New York culprit, Steve Serby says in The Post, a player who “has done more than anyone to sabotage the Knicks’ championship dreams and ambitions. He should have stayed in bed with the flu.”

And Carmelo Anthony? Not his fault, Ian O’Connor writes at ESPN, “not with Anthony’s teammates looking about as comfortable in this series as Sergio Garcia looked on Sunday on the 17th tee.” Harvey Araton in The New York Times says that Anthony’s supporting cast Tuesday was “disintegrating before the eyes of the Bankers Life Fieldhouse crowd.”

But Matt Moore at CBS Sports says that Anthony has to do more: “These are ugly games. He doesn’t have to have 36 points on 13 shots. But 8 points on 10 second-half shots won’t cut it. He’s got to be the weapon that distracts the Indiana defense, makes them react.”

Indiana does not have anyone with the profile of Anthony (or Tyson Chandler, for that matter), which, Ian Thomsen writes at Sports Illustrated, is a good thing. “The Pacers’ weakness is their lack of superstar leadership,” he says, “yet in three of these four games they’ve turned that quality into an across-the-board strength” — sharing the ball, for example.

This is not to say the Pacers are without standouts. Paul George is one, says Brian Windhorst at ESPN; he is “the third-year wing” who “is showing off a defensive skill set and confidence that is beyond his years.”

A series stands at 3-2, and no one is ruling anything out, although San Antonio, which took the lead against Golden State on Tuesday, is “reaching back to when the Spurs made their names on the defensive end of the court instead of getting caught up in the fast-paced, high-scoring modern N.B.A.,” says J. A. Adande at ESPN.

Marc J. Spears at Yahoo says “the Warriors have overcome long odds much of the season,” but Monte Poole at The Oakland Tribune thinks that the Warriors’ “most important players are wearing down, and it shows. It will be difficult to win two straight against a Spurs team accustomed to the suffocating air of the playoffs.”

The Mets are not a game or two behind in a seven-game series — they are 14-22 — but Matthew Kory at Sports on Earth says they are more or less done — in May! “If you give New York a third-place finish,” he writes, perhaps overoptimistically, “then to win a wild card they have to beat out all but one of [as the standings now sit] Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Arizona and Colorado. That’s a tall order for David Wright and one 24-year-old pitcher.”

Brian Urlacher’s career also looks to be finished, with the Minnesota Vikings the latest team not to be interested in signing the former Chicago Bear.

The Bulls could use him. The Bulls, who have more players in suits than the latest Men’s Wearhouse commercial, could use anybody. They’re expected to end their season Wednesday night against the Miami Heat, per ESPN and, oh, absolutely everyone else.